


Unwitting Gift

by Realshow



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Gen, Horror, Origins, Parts and Service, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Realshow/pseuds/Realshow
Summary: You know what they say. There are two sides to every story, and those stories can’t end without a beginning. This is the start of a rivalry... and the death of a lost cause.
Kudos: 2





	Unwitting Gift

Today was not a good day for William Afton. It wasn’t a trainwreck… but it wasn’t entirely pleasant either. The town had been stuck with constant rainstorms almost every day of the week, and his businesses weren’t doing as well as hoped. They were still making a profit, but the momentum from last year’s grand opening seemed to be dying down.

By now, his day should have ended. Instead, Henry gave him an assignment. One of the new restaurant’s security puppet animatronics had been malfunctioning, but he wasn’t sure how. It just… didn’t work, so William had to clean up the mess for him. The rain had started hours ago, and didn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. William got himself situated into his workshop, as the rain poured and poured. If he could, he’d definitely be getting some shuteye, but alas,  _ someone _ had to fix this thing.

His workshop was a fairly standard, but organized one, based out of what used to be the house’s garage. Of course he had a rack of tools and several bins of electronics, but he also liked to keep some spare supplies and prototypes around. In the back, he had a drawer filled with concept sketches for the redesigned characters, along with the head of a scrapped animatronic. He couldn’t be bothered to remember its name, or even its species.

The Puppet was positioned at his center table, sitting right on the edge of the corner. William already activated maintenance via a hidden button on its back, but now he had to open up its chest. He always hated this part, since he had to crank the left arm numerous times until the thing opened. Still had no idea why Henry made it like this...

After a few minutes, the thing finally opened. From a quick glance, everything seemed as it should. The voice box was in decent condition, the wires seemed to be working flawlessly, he could easily tell the chest area at least was fine. Starting at the legs, he began to dismantle the rest of the body. He was still amazed it actually managed to stand up and walk, but he knew now wasn’t the right time to brag to nobody. During all of this, however… something wasn’t right. He looked up at the mask, then turned around for a moment. 

He felt like someone was with him.

It was at that moment the atmosphere finally caught up with him. He was in a cold room on a dark night, and not fit for the weather. In just an instant, he felt like someone was starting at him, but couldn’t see anything. All he could see was just tools and tables, with no sign of anyone else. Despite this, he definitely felt something was nearby,

He was about to call out for whoever was there to show themselves, but he knew it’d be useless and only wake up his family. He pondered for a moment about who would even try to sneak in here… suddenly, an unwanted memory, an intruder, bubbled to the surface as if injected directly into his brain. Last week. When he fucked up, when he… 

‘No,’ he thought to himself. ‘Stop it.’

Trying to get his mind off the painful memories, William turned back to the animatronic and got back to work. Flipping the thing over, he began to detach the legs, this time by removing a few small screws on the rear. Both legs made a satisfying _click_ sound, almost as if they were held together by magnets… when they weren’t. He still didn’t understand how this happened.

Feeling slightly tired by this, he turned around and got a quick drink. When he went back to the table, the screws had vanished. He wondered if they'd fallen off the table or anything… but that was impossible, he'd put them in a tray, he _knew_ he did. On a hunch, he turned his attention to his work, and… they were somehow back inside the Puppet. This caught him off guard and raised so many questions, but he tried to stay calm and just decided to unscrew them again.

As time went on, he realized things didn’t add up. He had removed all four limbs, and there was nothing wrong with them. He looked inside of the chest cavity again, and everything was in order. Even the battery looked like it was fully charged after all this time. The only place left to check was the mask, so he sighed and reached for the cheeks of the mask. After pressing down on them for about twelve seconds, the thing slowly detached itself, eventually falling flat on the floor.

He bent down to grab it, but soon found one of his spare hammers, suddenly right next to one of the Puppet’s arms. Combined with the screws and a weird gut feeling, he was starting to feel kind of disturbed, but he went forward. He peeled off the Puppet’s protective lenses, getting caught off guard by the endoskeleton eyes. Not only was there an unnerving, hypnotic glare he never felt with the other endoskeletons, but the pupils had somehow turned from black like the lenses to brown. 

It almost reminded him of… nevermind. He was still feeling awful over that and didn’t want to lose focus. Still, it was pretty surreal how much was going on tonight. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that the eyes gave the lenses a weird but cool white pupil. He wasn’t really sure how that worked, but hey, it was pretty neat. To his annoyance, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the eyes either, despite the sudden color change.

He turned around to get another drink… when he heard some of the screws virtually skitter across the table like bugs. They stopped the moment he laid his eyes on them, but he was damn certain that he just saw them move. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath, and wouldn’t you know it, they were back where they should be. At this point, he knew something was up, but he had no idea what. He was basically frozen with fear, like he was back with those kids who seemed so sure of themselves. Kids that seemed too well-behaved for their age. Like they knew something he didn't.

It was probably just because it had gotten late, he told himself. Looking at the clock, it had been nearly forty minutes since he set the thing up. He took another deep breath and decided to just get some shuteye. He cleaned up some of his supplies, placed the limbs in a blue, plastic crate and walked over to turn the lights off. Then he realized that it had now turned its head to look at him in a way he didn’t even think was possible.

By now, he was on the verge of a panic attack. He went back over to the chest, and tried to make sure nothing was acting up. He pulled apart basically everything he could, and everything looked like it was where it should be. He picked up the crate and started analyzing the limbs again, beginning with the right leg.

He stared at it for about a minute, and tried to look over every last spot to be sure everything was alright, until he heard some kind of subtle shaking. He turned around, and the Puppet’s head was suddenly looking downwards. Simultaneously confused and frightened, he glared at the leg again and gently scratched it. Suddenly, all of the Puppet’s limbs were shaking and squirming, as if they were being tickled, but without any laughter or even noise. While the limbs were detached, the mask was removed and the thing was supposed to be in maintenance mode. If he hadn’t been horrified yet, he would be now.

He put the leg down and started to back away from the thing… when he noticed something. One of the left arms’ fingers had what looked like a dent. Like an action figure thrown onto a concrete floor. He cautiously grabbed it again, praying he wouldn’t see a repeat of what he just witnessed. What he got he couldn’t have predicted.

Some kind of fluid began leaking out of the chip. For a moment he thought it was oil… but then he heard water leaking. He took a step back, and in an instant, he saw water leak out of every nook and cranny of the animatronic. It was bleeding.

Glaring at the animatronic for a moment, he really had no idea what to say at this point. Either he had lost his mind, or he was being haunted by a dead child. No matter what, he couldn’t stop staring at the Puppet. Without it even saying anything, he got the sense that it was angry. 

Trying to figure out something to do, he turned around and tried to find the exit as quickly as possible, too afraid to remember which direction it was in. Soon, however, he heard a loud  _ SNAP,  _ followed by the whiz of something fast barely missing his head. He looked up, and immediately noticed that the garage door spring had broken into three pieces, sending bits of shrapnel all over the garage… he only got more horrified upon realizing that he could have been seriously hurt or even killed by the spring failure.

By now, it was obvious what she wanted, and William knew he couldn’t talk her out of this. He turned around again, only to see the Puppet slowly reassembling itself and twitching. The left arm, which was still in his hand, started to try pulling itself away, as if she was levitating it or using a magnet. William took a moment to think, gulped, and ultimately knew what he had to do. 

‘ **_You can't_ ** ’, William told himself. He marched towards the thing, and proceeded to slap the thing with its own arm. He continued to hit it again and again, surprisingly not causing any damage, until the thing stopped moving. Using this opportunity, he reattached the arm himself, using it to reopen the chest cavity, and turned the whole thing off in an instant, via a small switch on top of the power module.

To his horror, this didn’t seem to automatically stop it. Far from it. It started twitching and squirming rapidly, as it finally made a sound: the compressed, final wheeze of a broken little girl. All of this in just a mere few seconds. After this, what appeared to be steam started to emerge from the thing. As far as he could tell, the animatronic was completely inanimate again.

William took a moment to rethink all that had happened, and looked around his own garage. He glared back at the Puppet, which appeared to be as sentient as a rock. He sighed, then looked back down at his own hands… and was filled with shame. So, so much shame. Before long, he was on his knees and crying, barely managing to bring himself to saying he was sorry.

He neither knew or cared if the girl’s spirit was still very much there, frozen, listening, watching. For all intents and purposes, she was truly an object now, but only as long as her power was off. Whether he liked it or not, William had just found his archenemy, his fate, one he knew he could not fight, and it was all his fault.


End file.
